Dr. R.V. Bailey: “Tim Cunningham never disappoints. In his characteristically conversational style, his is a voice that speaks to us all, and speaks for us all, whatever his subject. We share his world: his love of Ireland and her history, as well as his own past; we are moved by all its warmth and honesty, its deep feeling, its startling wit and rare innocence.”
Gabriel Fitzmaurice: “‘By their scores you shall know them’, Tim Cunningham writes of painters, writers and musicians. He could be writing about himself, a celebrant of place, particularly Limerick, his home place, of family, of history, of the holy ground that he sees and celebrates in the major and minor keys of language. In lines that are classical and clear, Tim Cunningham looks through a glass brightly singing the marriage of heaven and earth. His poems are a river through a desert of despair.
“Incorporating the dance of life and the dance of death, Feathers is an accessible and valuable collection, one that adds greatly to the stature of Tim’s oeuvre. I am glad to raise my voice in praise.”
John Liddy: “What I marvel above all in this latest offering from Cunningham is the way he brings the reader . . . the onslaught of ageing and his voicing of what is wrong in society, what pains him. ‘Feathers’, the title poem, is a recurring word throughout the book to remind us, in one way, of the merit in what is found (rather than made) as does the presence of classical music and song. In the ‘Mayfly’, which closes the collection, the poet leaves us with his imprimatur
‘Where the dance of life
And the dance of death are one.’”